Nearly everyday life leans over and says, ‘Come on down!’ But standing at the bottom looking up, it’s finally dawned on me that it’s not these invitations that have dug this hole. Rather, it’s the fact that I accepted them.

God invites. We decline. And because of that single foolhardy decision we spend the rest of our lives ‘declining’.

What is life but God's daring invitation to a remarkable journey? And what is human nature but a staunchly inbred tendency toward self-preservation? And because of the rigidly paradoxical nature of these things, the road of life is seldom trod beyond a few scant steps.

I don’t necessarily sit around inviting life to knock me down, but when it does I don’t wait around for an invitation to stand back up either.

When we ask God to leave, at the self-same time we’ve extend an invitation for other things to come. And if we’re wondering exactly who or what we’ve extend that invitation to, watch the news.

The most sacred invitation that a person can extend to us is to invite us into their pain. But that means that we have to choose to knock on a door that we often prefer to pretend is not there.

Loss is an invitation to a journey of unparalleled growth, yet we seldom RSVP the invitation.

It’s not about inviting great things into our lives. Rather, it’s about accepting the invitation of great things to step out of our lives.